SORDELLO: 



A HISTORY AND A POEM. 



By CAROLINE H. DALL. 




BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1886. 






u^ 



Copyright, 18S6, 
By Caroline H. Dai.l. 



University Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, 



NOTE. 



This article was originally written in Canada between 1850 
and 1855. It was drawn, so far as it is historic, from some 
old "Croniche," both printed and manuscript, deposited in 
the library of the Canadian Parliament, said to have belonged 
to one of the early Jesuit explorers. These perished afterward 
in a fire which destroyed the library. 

The article was first prepared for a drawing-room lecture. 
Afterward, to satisfy some pupils, it was condensed and printed 
in a magazine in 1872. It is now reprinted as a tract for dis- 
tribution, at the request of certain members of the Browning 
Society in England, and of Browning Clubs in this country, 
who probably would not want it so very much if they could see 
it beforehand ! 

I have yielded to the request because I feel that the poem is 
especially dear to its " maker," and that it holds a lesson much 
needed in these modern days. 

When Browning rewrote it, he injured it ; and I have allowed 
my old quotations from the first edition to stand, re-arranging 
his lines sometimes to throw out the meaning. His changes, 
however, are significant of the growth of his own nature. 

For example, in the first edition we read, — 

" Here is a soul, whom to affect 
Nature has plied with all her means from trees 
And flowers, e'en to the multitude ; 
And is it to be saved or no. 
That soul ? " 

But in the last edition we read, — 

" E'en to the multitude, and these 
Decides he save or no ? " 

The movement of the lines turns on a new pivot, but one at 
last indestructible ; so I preserve the later reading. 



The body of the article was written before Browning had said 
a word in explanation of his purpose, or Longfellow had written 
one historic note. 

The poem contains the history of a soul. 

Browning's personality has stolen into it most effectively. It 
can never be popular, but all English scholars ought to under- 
stand his purpose in it, — a purpose which he candidly acknowl- 
edges by the running titles of his second edidon. 

No poem that he has written reminds me so forcibly of the 
lines of Elizabeth Barrett, — 

" Or from Browning some pomegranate, which, if cut deep down the middle, 
Shows a heart within, blood tinctured, of a veined humanity." 

Had there been any cordial response to it, I think he might 
have come out of his middle-age dream, and possibly instead of 
our poet we should have had a " maker of new men." 

CAROLINE HEALEY DALL. 



Mar., 1886. 

1667 31st Street, 

Washington, D. C 



SORDELLO: 

A HISTORY AND A POEM. 



SORDELLO, THE TROUBADOUR. 

" "\"\ /HO wills has heard Sordello's story told," yet not 
' ' without some hard work; some diving into old 
and musty chronicles, the best American collection of 
which perished when the library of the Canadian Parlia- 
ment was burned. 

It was the audacity of genius only that dared found a 
poem on a history so obscure that no two writers can be 
found who call its hero by the same family name. Had 
Sordello, on the contrary, been an historic personage, stark 
and startling as Wellington himself, the din of political 
turmoil, the smoke of war, intrigue, conflicting houses and 
interests into which he was born, might have sued for 
explanation at the poet's hand. It would even have helped 
a little had Browning only said, " Salinguerra and Taurello 
are the same man." 

In Aliprando's fabulous " History of Milan " we find 
long stories of Sordello, borrowed, doubtless, from still 
older sources, and stealing out of his verses into the 
solemn Latin prose of Platina's " History of Mantua." 
There we are told that Sordello was born into the Visconti 
family, at Goifto, in Mantua, in 1189. A mere boy, he 
startled the world of letters by a poem called " Tresor." 
That of arms did not open to him till he was twenty-five, 
when he distinguished himself, not only by bravery and 



address, but by a dignity and grace of manner the first 
glimpse of his slight figure hardly promised. 

He was conqueror in scores of tilts, and vanquished 
foreigners went back to France to proclaim his chivalry 
to that court. 

Then Louis wanted him, and Sordello was hastening 
across the Alps, when Ecelin da Romano called him to 
Verona, Here his young life was made wretched by 
Beatrice, sister of Ecelin. Prayers, tears, and swoons, 
however, did not prevent him from seeking in Mantua a 
refuge from an intrigue unworthy of his honor. She fol- 
lowed him to Mantua, disguised as a page, and in the end 
became his wife. A few days after the wedding, to which 
it can hardly be said that he consented, the Troubadour 
very naturally remembered that King Louis needed him. 
Partly at court, and partly in the ancient French city of 
Troyes, his valor, his gallantry, and his sweet verses won 
all hearts. Louis made him a chevalier, and gave him 
three thousand francs and a golden falcon. On his return, 
the Italian cities met him, one after the other, with stately 
congratulation, the Mantuans coming in a crowd to greet 
him. In 1229 he joined his wife at Padua, and that city 
celebrated his return by a whole week of festivity. From 
1250 to 1253 the brother of Beatrice, Ecelin da Romano, 
besieged Mantua. At last the unwilling husband led the 
people out, and in the fray that followed Ecelin perished. 

But this graceful story could not have been true. At 
the time when it asserts that Sordello went into France 
there was no Louis — only a Philip Augustus — on the 
throne. The siege of Mantua did not begin till 1256, and 
Ecelin died in 1259. His sister's real name was Cuniza. 
Perhaps Sordello told some such story of himself in one of 
the dancing rhymes he sung by the camp-fire. Very soon 
did such songs turn into history. 

Rolandino, a Latin historian, born at Padua, in the year 
1200, and therefore a contemporary, mentions the matter 
differently. 



" Cuniza, wife of Richard of St. Boniface, and sister of 
Ecelin da Romano, was stolen from her husband," he says, 
"by one Sordello, who was of the same family P The 
ambiguity of this last phrase perplexed Tiraboschi, but 
would hardly deserve our attention if it had not furnished 
a hint for the modern poem. In Browning's hands, Sor- 
dello is no guilty troubadour, but the unwitting victim of 
political schemers, held as a hostage by his ambitious 
enemy, and that enemy a woman. Palma takes the place 
of Cuniza, but with no dishonor to her family. Rolandino 
adds that the pair took refuge with the father of Cuniza, 
who finally drove them forth in disgrace. 

Dante, however, had something to say of Sordello which 
Browning has remembered. 

At the entrance of Purgatory, in a spot where the 
impenitent mingle with those who have died a violent 
death, Virgil meets Sordello. " O Mantuan ! " he cries ; 
" I am Sordello, born in thy land." Dante here attributes 
to him " the lion's glance and port," and in his treatise 
" De Volgari Eloquentia" says that Sordello excelled in 
all kinds of composition, and that he helped to form the 
Tuscan tongue by some happy attempts which he made in 
the dialects of Cremona, Brescia, and Verona, cities not far 
removed from Mantua. He also speaks of a " GoTto Man- 
tuan," who was the author of many good songs, and who 
left in every stanza an unmatched line which he called the 
key : and this singer Tiraboschi thinks is our Troubadour. 

Benvenuto dTmola, a commentator on Dante, of the 
fourteenth century, says, in a note to the sixth canto of 
the " Purgatory," — " Sordello was a native of Mantua, an 
illustrious and skilful warrior, and an accomplished cour- 
tier. This chevalier lived in the time of Ecelin da Romano, 
whose sister conceived for him so violent a passion that 
she often had him brought to her apartments by a private 
way. Informed of this intrigue, Ecelin disguised himself 
as a servant, and surprised the unfortunate poet, who 
promised on his knees not to repeat the offence. But," 



8 

continues Benvenuto in forcible Latin, " the cursed Cuniza 
dragged him anew into perdition. He was naturally grave, 
virtuous, and prudent. To withdraw himself from Ecelin 
he fled, but was pursued and assassinated." 

Benvenuto attributes to Sordello a Latin work, "The- 
saurus Thesaurorum ; " and if such a work ever existed we 
understand the sympathy with which the Troubadour em 
braced the knees of Virgil, — " O Glory of the Latins ! " 
etc. Dante, at all events, thought of him as a patriot, and 
his outburst over the meeting colors the modern poem. 
That his poems were more philosophical than amatory was 
a still further appeal to the sympathy of the Florentine. 

While Benvenuto was indignantly cursing Cuniza, some 
sketches of the Troubadour were written in Provencal, 
which say: "Born in the Mantuan territory, of a poor 
knight named Elcorte, Sordello early began to write the 
songs and short satires called in the language of that day 
Sirventes. He was attached to the Count of St. Boniface, 
and the lover of his wife, and eloped with her under the 
protection of her brothers." At war with the count, these 
brothers seem to have been rather more anxious to do him 
an ill turn than to protect their family honor. "Then 
Sordello went into Provence, where they gave him a cha- 
teau, and he became honorably connected in marriage," — 
Cuniza vanishing, we suppose, clean out of life, for she is 
named no more. 

, The lives of the Provencals, published by Nostradamus, 
in the sixteenth century, do not agree with the foregoing. 
They say Sordello was a Mantuan, who at the age of fifteen 
entered the service of Berenger, Count of Provence, and 
that his poetry was preferred to that of Folquet of Mar- 
seilles, Percival Doria, and all other Genoese and Tuscan 
troubadours. Beside writing philosophic songs, he wrote 
in Provencal an essay entitled " The Progress and Power 
of the Kings of Arragon in the Comte of Provence." 
Among his poems was one especially distinguished, — a 
satire, — in which, while lamenting the death of Blacas, he 



burst into a philippic against' all Christian princes. He 
died soon after this, in 1281. 

Giambattista d'Arco attributes to Sordello several histor- 
ical translations out of the Latin into the " vulgar tongue," 
and an original treatise on " The Defence of Walled 
Towns." 

The memoirs of the early Italian poets by Alessandro 
Tilioli are still unpublished, but the manuscript only re- 
peats the fable of Platina. 

Tiraboschi, who had access to a very large number of 
manuscripts, rejects most of these splendid stories. Ac- 
cording to him, Sordello was a Mantuan, born at Goito, 
at the very close of the twelfth century. He went into 
Provence, but not when a boy. He eloped with the wife 
of his friend, Count Boniface. He was of noble family, 
and a warrior ; but never a captain-general nor a governor 
of Mantua. He died a violent death, about the middle of 
the thirteenth century; but in 1281 he would have been a 
hundred years old ! 

And this ends the story. As we work our way through 
the old chronicles, it would seem at times as if there must 
have been two men,- — one a warrior and a thinker, the 
other a singer only, — whose lives have become inextrica- 
bly blended, and whose characteristics have bewildered 
the chroniclers by turns. But the shadowy old Podesta 
of Mantua, whom Dante is supposed to have remembered 
with Ghibelline sympathy, eludes observation even more 
successfully than the troubadour. If he ever lived, he 
must consent in this day to transfer his " lion port," his 
" Latin tongue," and " The Defence of Walled Towns " he 
put before the Mantuan council, to the graceless head of 
the idle singer. 

The conflicting tales are only worth recalling because 
each fragment of them has had more or less to do with 
Browning's poem. 

None of the prose translations, nor any poems, written 

2 



lO 

by Sordello in the Tuscan tongue survive. His verses in 
the Provencal are all that remain to vindicate his genius. 
Thirty-four pieces, for the most part gallant songs, chal- 
lenge the statement of Nostradamus, — that he was de- 
voted to philosophy. Two have been translated by Millot. 
The refrain of the first is, — 

" Alas ! of what use to have eyes 
If they gaze not on her I desire ? " 

It is written in very pure taste. The second is a more 
ordinary affair. Three of the pieces are of the sort called 
" Tensons," — that is, dialogues. One discusses the duty 
of a bereaved lover. The second compares the pursuit of 
knightly feats with the delights of love, and weighs the 
satisfactions of each. The third discusses "the bad faith of 
princes," — a subject which he renews in an epistle ad- 
dressed to St. Boniface. We should have but a poor 
opinion of his mettle were this epistle the only testimony 
to it ; for he begs to be excused from joining the crusaders ! 
He " is in no haste," he says, " to enter on eternal life." 
His other poems are Sirventes. 

Many of them attack the troubadour Vidal. In these, 
threats mingled with insults, which become gross as soon 
as they are translated. Some, which relate to the moral 
and political aspects of his own time, merit our attention, 
and doubtless have furnished Browning with more than 
one pungent line. In one, the poet scoffs at those who, 
under pretext of extirpating heretical Albigenses, have 
banded together to despoil Raymond, Count of Toulouse. 
The Satire in which he entreats this prince not to submit 
to insult or rapine must have been written in 1228; be- 
cause it speaks of the absolution just received by Raymond 
VII. 

His best poem is his lament for Blacas, a Spanish trou- 
badour of remarkable personal courage. It is a satire, 
and sovereign princes are urged to share between them 
the heart of the hero. 



II 

"Let the emperor eat first -of it," says the song, "that 
he may recover what the Milanese have taken ! Let the 
noble King of France eat of it, that he may regain Castile ! 
but it must be when his mother is not looking ! " etc. 

This King of France was probably Louis IX., and the 
verses must have been written in the ten years preceding 
1236. 

The best of Sordello's verses show a dignity of compo- 
sition and purity of taste which put him in the very front 
rank of the Provencals. His great hold on posterity con- 
sists in the fact that he preceded Dante in the classic use 
of the vulgar tongne. 

It remains only to see what use Browning makes of this 
material. Into what shifty net did he weave these wide- 
floating threads of gleaming gold ? It may be said at the 
outset that Sordello's power as a satirist seems never to 
have made the least impression upon him. 



12 



II. 

THE POEM. 

T DO not think that Browning knew what a problem he 
•^ set before the world in Sordello. Perfectly at home 
in the Middle Ages himself, he had little idea that the terms 
" Guelf " and " Ghibelline" were actually obsolete, and that 
the small struggles of the old Italian courts had lost sig- 
nificance in the grand scope which steam engines, tele- 
graphs, and newspapers had offered to the passions of men. 
We all know the story of Douglas Jerrold, who, waiting 
impatiently in his sick chair for his wife to get home from 
market, flung the first part of the Poem at her, with the 
words, " Read that ! " She read ; and he watched the ex- 
pression of perplexed and puzzled imbecility steal over her 
face, till he threw himself back in his chair with the ejacu- 
lation, "Thank God! /am not an idiot." 

The " Bells and Pomegranates " upon the borders of 
Browning's priestly robe, however, always ring out a noble 
peal. No more in Sordello, than in the better known and 
more popular poems, have we an unmeaning jingle of words 
over a meaningless glance into a dark past. 

" Compassed murkily about 
With ravage of six long, sad hundred years," 

Browning introduces Sordello to us. " Makers of new 
men," he says, — 

" Had best . . . chalk broadly on each vesture's hem 
The wearer's quality." 

And then follows a page or two of reflection, so personal 
that we foresee faintly in Sordello such picturing of the 
modern poet as his ecstasy may betray him into. 

Then the centuries open. It is sunset at Verona. 



^3 

Frederick II. is Emperor of Germany. In the Pope's 
chair sits Honorius. Both of these men are trying hard 
to get Lombardy and the Northern Duchies. All Italy is 
harrowed with Guelf and Ghibelline swords. A highway 
into the very heart of battle-fields and vineyards is what 
France, Germany, and Italy ahke demand ; but who shall 
take the toll ? Lingering in the market-place, full of dying 
sunlight, and restless with busy talkers, we hear envoys 
from Ferrara tell how Taurello Salinguerra, Lord of 
Ferrara, has Richard of St. Boniface, Lord of Verona, 
in his hands. 

Thus the matter fell. The Pope and his Guelfs were 
gaining power. Taurello and his liege Ecelin da Romano 
slumbered at their posts, faithful friends as they were sup- 
posed to be to Emperor and Ghibellines. Pretending that 
his presence only brought disturbance to Ferrara, Taurello 
left his city, and went to Padua. 

No sooner was his back turned than the cowardly Guelfs 
seized his property, burned his palaces, and ravaged his 
gardens. They were drunk with conquest, under the com- 
mand of Azzo, Lord of Este. 

Suddenly Taurello was on their heels ; all who escaped 
slaughter fled, and he, king-like, ruled once more in 
Ferrara. 

Then Este rallied his Guelfs, and sat down before Fer- 
rara, whose gaunt burghers ground their teeth to see the 
serried ranks encamp among their corn, while within the 
walls men fed on men. Taurello bade the Lord of Verona 
end the war. Like a foolish boy, St. Boniface offered to 
enter Ferrara with fifty chosen friends. A lonely march 
through woe-struck streets, and then Taurello sprung his 
trap, and all were prisoners. 

The interests of the people lay with the Pope, those of 
the feudal chiefs with the Emperor ; for him Ecelin of 
Romano still plotted like a fiend. A fiend it may be ; but 
Taurello, who is childless and alone, still clings to his 
chosen liege, and plots for Ecelin, who, weary of a world 



that refuses to be wound pliantly about his finger, is quiet 
at last in a convent at Oliero. 

Here in Verona, where we listen, envoys demand succor 
for these fifty prisoners from the fifteen cities of the Lom- 
bard League. 

The council of twenty-four sits in the palace of St. 
Boniface. 

Gliding through " clapping doors," behind the dark 
recesses left by banquet halls, we come at last where, on 
a couch at rest, — 

" Saturate with one woman's presence," 

" whose wise, lulling words are still about the room," we 
find our Troubadour, He is still listening to her " ves- 
ture's creeping stir," when an outcry from the square 
beneath pierces the charm. 

He springs up, the morning light breaks on the gay 
dress, and we behold, — 

" Sordello ! thy forerunner, Florentine ! " 

Here, on the very night when the fate of the prisoners 
is to be decided, we see Sordello, the forerunner of Dante, 
into whose " relentless orb" the glory of the singer who 
first " strove to frame a Tuscan tongue " has been absorbed, 
and Palma, daughter of Ecelin da Romano, whom he 
loves. 

He had been reared in Mantuan territory, a country one 
vast morass to that old city's walls. One little spot had 
been reclaimed thirty years before from that " broad marish 
floor." Goi'to, a castle among low mountains shaded by 
firs and larches and wide reaches of vineyard. Within, 
the castle walls are — 

" Crossed by dark corridors, contrived for sin." 

The galleries bring us to one fair maple-panelled room. A 
dim haze floats along its wall. A sunbeam strikes it, turns 



15 

it to gold, and shows us Arabian inscriptions there, while 
pillars, like slender palms whose boughs entwine, — 

"Bend kissing top to top." 

Still more wonderful is a vault, with murky shade about 
its ceiling. Fine slits across the buttress suffer fitful light 
to fall upon a gray streaked font, supported on all sides by 
shrinking Caryatides. 

" The font's edge burdens every beautiful shoulder." 

And here at evening Sordello used to come, sitting by 
each fair form in turn, till the cheerful light slanted in 
among the noiseless girls, and kindled faint smiles on the 
marble lips with its red beams. Nowhere has Browning 
left a more exquisite picture than this. We hate to turn 
from it to the hill-tops, vineyards, or the little wood where, 
in a loose page's dress, we find the boy again. In autumn 
watching the thievish birds, in winter holding his torch up 
to the broidered arras, gleaming with strange portraits of 
the old Lord of Romano, of Ecelin and his many wives, 
" weird Adelaide " coming last, for whose vile incantations 
the Arabic letters nestle among the palms in the maple 
chamber, — 

" Yourselves shall trace 
A soul fit to receive 
Delight at every sense ; you can believe 
Sordello foremost in the regal class 
Nature has broadly severed from the mass." 

And then Browning meditates for a page or two on the 
poetic temperament, in a fashion which shows very plainly 
how little it is for its own sake that the portrait of Sordello 
is started out of that old wall of — 

" Six sad hundred years." 

Scorn of the world's indifference shuts the minstrel into 
solitude. If the world's occasion is not fit for his mastery, 
and he will not strive for the good of mankind, enervate 



i6 

he must grow. If the end must be piteous, he says at 
last, let us shut it out of sight, and begin gently to twine 
the threads of the young poet's life. 

Sordello never could remember when he did not live at 
Goito. Youth had glided calmly by in this secret lodge of 
Adelaide, Nothing did he know of a world beyond those 
forest glades. The castle seemed empty, but he wandered 
there at pleasure. 

Some mysterious interdict, shutting him out of the 
Northern side, was just enough remembered to keep him 
near the font, the maple chamber, or the breezy parapet 
which overlooked Mantua. 

A dozen distant hill-tops were his only clew to the world. 
He lived in delicious indolence, tended by a few foreign 
women, blending his life with that of land, sea, flower, bird, 
and insect. " Content as the worm that strips the trees," 
he exhausted each day's delight. Like him, also, hung 
in a hammock web of his own sporting fancies, he would 
yet put forth wondrous wings in quest of unforeseen 
good. 

Selfish he must grow, his moral life utterly undeveloped. 
Weary of merging his own life in that of poppy and linnet, 
he began to feel the need of other lives. Vanity put forth 
her claims. He vivified the forms in the old tapestry. 
Streams of life-like figures flowed through his brain. He 
lived the life of each, and studied hungrily his own puppets. 
He compared his life v/ith that of the grim warriors on the 
arras. "Will no career open for him also ?" Those men 
were older, his call was yet to come, so comforted, if not 
careless, he waits on. Meanwhile he finds — 

" The AiDollo in his soul." 

On a " colorless faint tune " he began to hum the songs of 
Eglamor, and out of the heart of Nature wrung — 

" New verses of his own." 

He fancies himself surrounded by soft Delian girls, — 
among them, too, a Daphne. 



17 

It was the common talk at this time that Azzo, Lord of 
Este, who had so lately ravaged Taurello's houses and 
gardens at Ferrara, should secure the fealty of St. Boni- 
face, whom Taurello had just shut up with his fifty chosen 
friends, by giving him the hand of Palma. Palma was the 
sole child of Lord Este's sister, Agnes Este, who had mar- 
ried Ecelin da Romano, before any " weird Adelaide " had 
caught him in her toils, and " turned him wicked." 

So far the maiden had defied the toils of state. No 
modern Michal she ! 

One day Sordello met her in the pines, with her tresses 
falling round her like " shed sunbeams." He learned then, 
perhaps, why he had been shut out the Northern wing; 
but to his thinking — 

" She who scorned all, best deserved Sordello ! " 

Did he grow pale for her, or for that delayed career .'' 

Taurello had lately been at Mantua. So long Adelaide 
lingered at Goi'to. As soon as he departed, as if relieved 
of some secret care, she had returned to the capital, where 
troubadours were gathered to sing before her of the glories 
of Romano. 

Why did Adelaide keep guard at Goito whenever Tau- 
rello drew near ? She did not distrust her husband's 
friend. It was Taurello who helped her to goad Ecelin on, 
and the fortunes of the two had grown, till Este and St. 
Boniface had begun to falter. 

One warm spring day long years of life like this were 
broken up by an accident, which ushered in — 

"The veritable business of mankind." 

The Second Book of the Poem opens here. Sure that 
Palma must be out under the warm heaven at this budding 
time, Sordello wandered witless over the marshy floor, 
where every footfall sent up a sparkling jet. The verge of 
a new wood was gained. That screen of trees must surely 
"yield her to his eyes." He pressed on, in jealous rage of 

3 



i8 

that Boniface he had heard some talk of, but lo ! Mantua 
this time, and not Palma. 

Under its walls, and near a pavilion, a gay and laughing 
crowd are clustered. By and by, the silken curtains open, 
and not Boniface, but his minstrel, comes forth to sing his 
wooing. 

Naddo strings a lute for Eglamor, who sings of Elys. 
In the soul of Sordello a deeper music murmurs. Many 
a gap in the song does it supply. His heart throbs with 
longing to speak. Before the shouts which follow have 
died away, with no heed to those who twitch at his sleeve, 
Sordello springs into the crowd, beginning — 

" The true song with the true end." 

Names, time, and place he stole from Eglamor. On flew 
the song, a giddy race after a flying story. Rhyme sprang 
on the back of rhyme. The people crowded round, — 

" The prize ! the prize ! ! " 

They shouted. He had gained something then ! and into 
a soft slumber would gladly have sunk with that rosy dream 
floating through his brain. 

At that moment the crowd opens. He sees Adelaide 
sitting silent, and at her feet the maid of the North 
Chamber. 

With just six words Palma laid the scarf upon him, 
warm with her own life. Her golden curls kissed his 
cheek. 

He knew no more till he woke, some furlongs off at 
home, crowned, — with that scarf about his neck, and 
curious women kindly gaping round. 

The Jongleurs Naddo, Tagliafer, and Squarcialupe had 
brought him back. 

Poor Eglamor was dead of sorrow. Already trumpeters 
proclaimed that Palma had chosen Sordello for her min- 
strel. 

Sordello, who had YiiXhoxto perceived^ now began to think, 
and naturally enough, of his own poem. 



19 

How had they come to feel its beauty who had never, 
like him, "threaded the golden mazes" of Palma's hair 
with the hand ? 

Low mournful footsteps broke his reverie. Some friends 
led by Naddo were carrying the body of Eglamor to the 
grave, a few loose flowers in its hand. Eglamor loved his 
art. He stood faltering before it, like the Perseus, who hid 
the naked beauty of Andromeda with her golden hair. 

His new song had been dear to him, but he shouted for 
Sordello with the rest, and bending to lay his withered 
crown beside the fresh one, left tears and a kiss upon the 
singer's hand. Nay ! he even sang, at the careless bidding 
of bystanders, the very song with which Sordello had 
outshone him; then went home. 

His little knot of friends were already with the rising 
star, the new Sordello. 

Hot, weary, puzzled by his uncertain future, he slept, 
and did not wake. 

They found as much who went to gossip heartlessly 
before him of Sordello' s life and song. 

Sordello laid his fresh crown upon the dead man's 
breast, and in sweet song besought Nature still to hold him 
dear. 

The prayer was not bootless. 

A plant, which bears a three-leaved bell, that ripens to 
its heart ere noon, its soft, pure petals falling noiseless as 
the last breath of the Trouvere, still bears the name 
of Eglamor. 

In May, Sordello lay once more beneath the flowing 
laurel, wondering why the old castle hid so the secret of 
his birth. 

Years before, when a factious mob hung reviling on the 
skirts of Ecelin's army, he in anger set all their homes on 
fire, forgetting for the moment that his wife was sheltered 
among them. There in the flames, did Adelaide give birth 
to Ecelin the younger, and the babe was rescued from the 
mob by a poor archer, named El Corte. There was no one 



20 

left to thank, when they thought of it years after, but his 
young son Sordello. 

This child Adelaide carried to Goito, a retreat which the 
bad woman kept for herself when times were rude, when 
Este clamored for Palma, or Taurello, who had lost all his 
family in those dreadful flames, came to the Mantuan 
court. 

This was the story that Sordello knew, and he mused on 
it, losing sight of that "Apollo in his soul." 

Crazed by his sudden fame, what need had he to square 
his course by any known example ? He would be mighty 
for Boniface, he thought, and graceful for Palma, as he six 
times read over Naddo's lines, entreating him to visit Man- 
tua and " feed a famished world." Naddo was Sordello's 
henchman now. 

Far more did Sordello care for the fame which waited 
on his verses than for the verse itself. Under Apollo he 
sang for the smiles of his Dehans. Now the rhymes were 
Eglamor's, and Naddo chuckled. 

Looking back now, it is easy to mark the source of the 
Troubadour's power. He seized the elements of the hour, 
and made them the puppets of his muse. If Sordello sang 
of Montfort, straightway Montfort's name was on every 
Mantuan lip ; but who spoke of Sordello .■* 

" He footed a delusive round : 
The poet thwarting hopelessly the man." 

Quiver and bow he flung aside, striving with the lute alone 
for the Mantuan world's applause. The Man-Poet, John's 
" cloud-girt angel," was gone. 

It was too tedious, he thought, to give a life-time to 
the answer of such questions as Naddo's stupidity might 
suggest. 

His soul, no longer seeking to compass the whole world 
of Truth, saw in the tithe it had compassed less and less 
to strive about. 

"Would you have your songs endure.-*" asked Naddo, 



21 

taunting him : "then build on the human heart." Dreams 
and reality both failed him here. 

Meanwhile the world rejoiced that sudden sickness set 
it free from Adelaide. 

On her death Ecelin writes to his friend Romano, that 
three weddings are to put an end to Guelf and Ghibelline 
strife. 

His two sons, Alberic and Ecelin, are to marry Beatrice 
d'Este and Giglia St. Boniface, while Palma is to be given 
to Count Richard, as the old rumor said. 

If interests can but be sufficiently mixed, perhaps that 
great highway between France and Germany and into 
Italy may be forgotten by everybody. 

Ecelin was at Vicenza. His letter found Taurello at 
Naples, sworn to sail next month with the Emperor for 
Syria. " Never thunder-clap so startled mortal ! " — " She 
to die, and I away ! " exclaimed Taurello, and half a score 
of horses dropped under him ere he stood, with reeking 
spurs, before his liege at Vicenza. 

" Too late ! " said Ecehn, panic-struck when he saw re- 
proach in his ally's face. " Boniface urged and Este would 
not wait ; but you have still my Palma. Be satisfied to 
keep that lure, only forgive ! " 

Taurello hastened to Mantua to make sure of Palma. 
The gay city called on Sordello to chant the soldier's wel- 
come, — upon Sordello, grown too indolent to be faithful, 
and taunted daily now with the success of his first song. 
Naddo goaded him, and he wandered away to see what 
power there might be in the cool shades of Go'ito. Out of 
the depths of the ravine he catches at last a glimpse of the 
old walls. 

Palma had gone that day, said the few remaining women. 
Kneeling by the old font, among the shrinking maidens, 
he put off his scarf, threw in his crown, and said with a 
long smile, " I shall be king again." Next day there was 
no poet. 

Taurello frowned. Naddo whispered of caprices that 



22 

must be borne, and his lord settled his portly frame again, 
and looked toward the bull-fight. 

The Third Book opens with Sordello still at Goito. 

" And the font took thctn. Let our laurels lie." 

So they did " lie " for more than a year. Sordello haunted 
his old nooks, or slept in the maple chamber. 

" The stain 
Of the world forsook him — with its pain." 

" Slide here 
Over a sweet and solitary year, 
Wasted — 

He slept, but was aware he slept, 
And frustrate so." 

" Deeds let escape are never to be done." 

" Leaf fall, and grass spring, for the year, not us." 

Wondering why he had ever left Mantua, he wandered 
home one autumn day. The clouds, those everlasting 
travellers, slipped over him, omvard. He was dreaming of 
Palma, of lost chances and duties, but dreaming consciously, 
perception self-perceiving. On this mood broke the voice 
of Naddo: — 

" Taurello sent " — 

Then out rushed the news of the double marriage, and 
of Ecelin's retirement to a convent at Oliero. He had 
bribed the Pope with a slice of his estate, had divided the 
rest between his two newly married sons, and left all the 
tangle of his affairs for Taurello to unravel. Only a week 
since, Palma had plighted her faith to Boniface at Verona. 
They wanted Sordello perhaps to chant the bridal songs! 

Promptly Sordello rose, which was more than Naddo 
had hoped. Another day — a night, and Sordello reached 
Verona, saw it as we saw it at the beginning of the poem. 

Uneasy crowds fill the market-place. The Emperor 
Frederick only waits to be sure that his friend Taurello is 
firmly seated in Ferrara to wage the old war with the Pope. 



23 

Descending as the head of the Lombard League, he will 
reburnish the traditional glory of Charlemagne. 

Sordello and Palma have found each other at last. While 
the council discuss the condition of the fifty prisoners, they 
sit with hands close interlocked, the tumult in the square 
never checking the quick, low laughter in their dim closet, 
till at last in burst a servitor of Palma : — 

" Now, lady !" 

Then the two arose and leaned out into the night, all the 
air "dead still." In a moment the black balcony beneath 
them glares with torches, and gray-haired men stand there 
shouting to the crowd. The swaying masses lay hold of 
the great bell, whose fierce clang asserts that the League 
is arming and Verona true to her lord. Beyond the 
eastern cypresses, a beacon glows ; before its light grows 
dim, soldiers under Tiso Sampler are to march through 
that open gate. Boniface is to be saved. 

With a coy, fastidious grace, Palma settled to her place 
again, and told her tale — at first the tale of her own 
youth. 

Nothing had she known at Goi'to, except a longing to be 
loved ; nor would she loose the powers within her until 
she knew whose hand would control them. 

" Because of him," 

she said, — 

"The wind walked like a herald." 

But she had never known him till the hour when she laid 
the crown upon Sordello's brow beneath the walls of 
Mantua. Adelaide, her step-mother, had gone on schem- 
ing. Now and then Ecelin, weary, baffled, disheartened, 
would have been ready to give it all up, and fight the world 
once more in his father's downright way ; but an hour 
with Adelaide had always reassured him, and how then 
could Palma push the fortunes of Sordello .-* 

On the wild night when Adelaide died, she had broken 
out into terrible confessions of treachery and sin. She 



24 

was taken at last in the midst of a half-uttered secret. 
Her sons were gone in anger, her husband in Padua, Tau- 
rello on the way to the Crusades. While her "fell dying 
laughter" still rung on Palma's ear, Ecelin broke in. 

" Girl ! " he said, " how shall I manage Este .'' " Then 
he declared it did not matter, for he would plot no more, 
master of all the marches as he was. Soon he bestirred 
himself to undo the dead woman's work, — undid her pacts, 
broke her marriages, bent his head before a friar, gave all 
his money to the church, divided his estates between his 
boys, and shut himself into a convent ! 

No thought took he for Palma. While she schemed 
alone at Goi'to Taurello came. He urged her to maintain 
the honor of her house against the house of Este ; told 
her of that great ancestor, old Ecelo, who followed Conrad 
into Italy, with no wealth but his steed, 

" Este needs the Pope," he said. " We of Romano have 
the Emperor," and promised his own help. 

So Palma went to Mantua, let Boniface think his wooing 
prosperous, and Taurello waited until some new Papal folly 
should give him room. 

Palma was a daughter of Este. Some day might see 
her rudely claimed. She had been plighted on the very 
day of the outbreak at Ferrara, when the fifty were made 
prisoners, and when she went to Verona to fulfil her troth, 
her impatient lover was on his way to the siege. 

" Surely Jiis absence was not Palma's fault .'' " 

To her drivelling father at Oliero Taurello wrote once 
more. Through Palma the answer came. His two boys 
were already in arms for Este. Palma might represent 
Romano if she would, and stand by Taurello's emperor ! 

All this Palma told Sordello in that dim closet where 
we found her. "Judge now," she continued, "if I mis- 
conceive — and whether the Emperor's cause is not your 
own. To-morrow, well disguised, let us precede the arbi- 
trators to Ferrara. Taurello will decide the rest." 

" The Emperor's cause his own ! " but had not Sordello 



25 

long ago decided that he was to fight for the /£■<?//,? w//// 
the Pope f 

Browning stops here to tell you w/iy Sordello yielded ; 
tells you sitting on a palace step at Venice, where he wrote 
the tale, — falls into a reverie (a very lazzarone of Par- 
nassus) ; draws pretty pictures in his own delicious way ; 
drops an episode about Plara the bard, and a few cutting 
thoughts of his own, not forgetting, in the red light of the 
sunset that he sees as he sings, how his main object in 
writing Sordello is — 

" To teach the poets." 

" Where 's the hurt 
To keep the Makers-See on the alert ? " 

The fourth book opens. 

Ferrara lies in rueful case. Both parties are too 
intent upon their fight to see that life has left her, and 
that the victor would at best embrace a corpse. 

The eastern Lombard cities have sent imperial envoys 
down to treat for Richard's ransom. The Papal legates 
have come also, looking in vain for the throng of graceful 
spires wont to pierce the sky, but gone long ago to mend 
the ramparts. They are to be received when the Emperor's 
envoys have departed. The various banners of the League 
flaunt gay and golden in the public square, and gossip 
goes on beside them. Men speak low, as if EceHn might 
listen at Oliero, but we overhear what Taurello would 
gladly hide. 

It is through a garden which Taurello planted long ago, 
to please his girlish bride Retrude, that the envoys at last 
move off to ask for ransom. In the streets hot curses fall 
on Ecelin and Taurello alike. Browning turns from both 
to touch in every square inch of this garden, from its red 
brick wall, with aloes " leering everywhere," to the terraces 
which lift straight to the palace gate. There stand Sor- 
dello and Palma, in disguise. Sordello trying to believe 
the Emperor's cause may be the " peoples' ; " both waiting 
for the two imperial legates to leave Taurello. 

4 



26 

After an hour in that council-chamber, the poet staggers 
out, older by years, blind, mute, as singers must be who 
forsake the Muse. 

Night sets in early. Mass begins at every " carroch." 
When the poet crouches beside the fire where Verona 
halts, voices demand a song, — Sordello's song. He sings 
it, with a remorse that quivers through the tones in which 
he says, "/ made it." At the close, a boy, nay, Palma, 
takes his hand and leads him out. 

Let us go back to Taurello's council-chamber at the 
moment when Sordello entered it. 

Before him lay a baldric, new, sent from the Emperor 
in honor of his stratagem. Somehow the stupid eyes of 
the Papal legate had missed it. Beside this was the 
message brought from Ecelin by Palma. 

" What a past life his flying thoughts pursue ! " 

There was no name so old as his in Mantua. Somewhat 
later his ancestors had carried it to Ferrara. 

The broils of his own family, the Salinguerri, and that of 
the Adelardi, divided the whole duchy. It was proposed 
to unite the interests of the two by the marriage of Tau- 
rello and the last daughter of the Adelardi, now the ward 
of the city. Taurello honorably waited for the decision ; 
but the people of Ravenna stole the girl, and bore her 
forcibly away to Este. Boniface defended the rape. Tau- 
rello carried his strong sword to Sicily, and Henry King 
of Sicily was glad to repay its services by the hand of his 
fair child Retrude. When Taurello drove the forgetful 
Este out of palaces that were none of his, he built a new 
one — untainted by an Este's touch — with green Sicilian 
gardens for his bride. This fair young creature, with her 
first-born child, had perished in the flames that Ecelin 
kindled at Vicenza. 

He was calm, men said, but from that time he had no 
fortunes left to further. He became a true liegeman to 
Ecelin and Adelaide, and sought honors for the house of 
Romano instead. 



27 

Henry offered a new bride, a statelier function, but in 
vain. Otho saw a warning sparkle in Taurello's eye, and 
learned — 

" He must be let alone." 

He had no " ideal of the graces," yet all the graces 
seemed to follow and cling to his brawny person. He 
spoke languages, criticised pictures, and even played the 
aiigelot to his own rhymes ; but, continues the poet, — 

"Why 
Detail you thus a varied mastery, 
But that Taurello, ever on the watch 
For men, to read their hearts, and thereby catch 
Their capabilities and purposes. 
Displayed himself, so far as displayed these ; 
While our Sordello only cared to know 
About men, as a means for him to show 
Himself, and men were much or little worth, 
According as they kept in or drew forth 
That self." 

During all these years Taurello had kept his treacherous 
enemies, Este and Boniface, at bay. As Ecelin grew old 
many things had changed, and but for Adelaide the house 
of Romano had fallen long before. It did fall before the 
sod was green upon her grave. Denied all counsel by her 
cowardly lord at Oliero, Taurello had again assumed his 
duties. Success attended his arms : — 

" He had to fight, 
And that became him ever." 

His old half-laughing hate for the house of Este began 
to show itself. 

He mused. Shall he turn traitor to Ecelin's heir, or 
crown him in his own despite .-' What wonder that he 
mused, as the poet says, " vmrkily " ? 

Palma and Sordello stand now at midnight, alone, by a 
smouldering watchfire. 

Sordello pleads with Palma. " Is there any People's 
cause at the bottom of Taurello s deeds .'' What meant 
his heartless tone to the imperial envoy .'' the excuse pre- 
ferred for burning the five hostages } " 



28 

Palma admits that both parties seem to her to strive alike 
for their own selfish ends. 

" My thought plainer expressed," Sordello answers. " If 
/ have done nothing, tJiese ttvo do far zvorse. Yet a noble 
hope lured me hither. Lapped in a merely sensuous life, 
God left me still the poet's one hope and thought, — that 
there was a cause beyond these, and that he, in spite of 
my unworthy youth, deemed me fit for its upholding." 

An archer pressed between them to ask for a song, the 
story of Crescentius Nomentanus. Sordello did not even 
know the name ! 

Then the archer tells how, born of the counts of 
Tusculum, Crescentius once established a pure and peace- 
able government in Rome, two centuries before. He had 
maintained it for eight years, crucified at last by the brutal 
Emperor, Otho III,, who gave over his wife to the soldiery. 

Sordello heard. Rome, hung with the green drapery that 
grew at Golto, with the misty light of Mantuan sunrises and 
sunsets, the guerdon for which popes and emperors had 
always striven, Rome was the poet's cause ! Should he 
find Romans fit to do his work } 

With the night falling, the fifth book opens. Is this 
' perished husk" the glowing champion we saw at dawn.'' 

" Things proved beautiful 
Could they be done, Sordello cannot do ! " 

And he sits there on the terrace, gathering and snapping 
in his powerless hand the powdery cusps of the aloe. 

" So perish, loveliest of my dreams." 

He had found no help, — no Romans among Ferrara's 
squalid sons. 

A low voice wound into his soul : — 

" Sordello, wake ! 
God has conceded two sights to a man, — 
One, of men's whole work, Time's completed plan ; 
The other, of the minute's work, man's first 
Step to the plan's completeness. 
Who began the greatnesses jj/c?^ know .-' " 



29 

The beautiful, pungent verses roll on here, revealing the 
deep, manly purpose of the poem : — 

" Strength by stress 
Of strength, comes of a forehead confident, 
Two widened eyes, expecting — Heart's Content ! " 

" Is 't so true 
God's church lives by a king's investiture ? " 

As he muses, the clang of the carroch breaks on his ear. 
"All 's well with the League." " The League, or trick of 
turning strength against pernicious strength," is safe : — 

" Still by stress 
Of strength, work, knowledge ! Full three hundred years 
Have men to wear away in smiles and tears 
Between the two that nearly seem to touch ! " 

" But all is changed the moment you descry 
Mankind is half yourself." 

Little wonder that, seeing so far as this, the poet shrank 
beneath his singing, grew miserable in sympathy with the 
poor maimed wretches in Ferrara streets, idiots wriggling 
about the camp-fire for their bread, or men gangrened 
from head to foot by accident of catapult, or manganel. 

" Since talking is your trade," 

whispered the voice again, — 

" There 's old Taurello left you to persuade." 

Shaking the aloe haulm from his doublet, Sordello rose, 
and went straight to the presence of his chief. 

The great head turned. " So ! " said Taurello, closing 
some talk with Palma, — 

" Your spokesman is El Corte's son .'' " 

The hesitating sunset floated back awhile, to caress the 
woman's form — perhaps to strengthen the man's heart. 

Sixty years of warfare had not made Taurello old. 
Graceful turned the head on his broad chest, encased in 
steel that sent back that lingering light in spray of fire. 



30 

Among the heavy curls of soft, warm brown, you could 
see the sharp, white line the basnet wore. 

" Square faced, 
No lion more ; two vivid eyes enchased 
In hollows filled with many a shade and streak." 

No wonder that a certain awe faltered through the tongue 
of the poet boy : — 

" Yet most Sordello's argument dropt flat, 
From his accustomed fault of breaking yoke — 
Disjoining him who felt from /«'w who spoke" 

In which three pregnant lines is struck out the source of 
all failure under the sun ! 

Pleading, he watched the faces of both. Taurello, play- 
ing with his rescript, scoffs ; then Sordello knew by a flash 
how the dreams of his long youth had eaten away his 
strength. Having lost earnestness, how could he hope to 
convince } Yet he went on : — 

" Assist the Pope, 
Extend his domination, fill the scope 
Of the church based on All, by All, for All." 

Taurello broke the silence with a jeer : — 

" Who '11 subscribe 
To a trite censure of the minstrel tribe. 
Henceforward .'' " 

But, says Browning here, — 

" Whom vanity nigh slew, contempt shall save ! " 

Within Sordello's soul perception brooded. All that he 
had stored there through his life outpoured : — 

" That eve was for that age a novel thing." 

About that group of three the people crowded, and while, 
like an inspired creature, Sordello vindicated the kingliness 
of the poet, — 

" The roof upsprung, 
The sad walls of the presence chamber died 
Into the distance, — 

And crowds of faces clustered round Sordello 
With good wishes, — no mere breath, — 
Kind prayers for him, — not empty, since come Death, 
Come Life, he was fresh sinewed every joint." 



31 

The rosy mist the sunset kindled kept a space about the 
poet. We see the picture as if Rembrandt had painted it. 

" So was I " (closed he his inculcating, 
A poet must be earth's essential king ! ) 
" So was I, royal so, and if I fail 
'T is not the royalty ye witness quail, 
But one deposed, who caring not exert 
Its proper essence, trifled malapert ?" 

Did the "Makers" read this lesson, I wonder, when Brown- 
ing first gave it to the world ? 
The poet went on : — 

" At my own showing 
A single service I am bound effect, 
Nor murmur. Bid me still, as poet, bow 
Taurello to the Guelf cause — which 
I labor for this eve, who feel at length 
My past career, outrageous vanity. 
And would as vain amends, die — even die, 
So death might bend Taurello." 

" Palma's lighted eyes 
Turned on Taurello, who, long past surprise, 
Began, ' Vou love him then ! ' " 

and went on to recapitulate all the adversities of the last 
month, — the treachery of Romano, — ending with a taunt. 
Perhaps Palma might wear the badge the Prefect left — or, 
should Sordello wear it for her .-' 

Jeeringly he threw the baldric over the poet's shoulder. 
He had trifled once too often. No sooner was it done than 
all felt through the terrible pause that followed some dim 
perception of the truth : — 

" This badge alone 
Makes you Romano's head ; 
For you there 's Palma to espouse. 
For me one crowning trouble." 

Then Palma told, — 

" Somewhat Adelaide confessed, 
A year ago, while dying on her breast." 



32 

Flying in the terrible night when her son Ecelin was 
born, her convoy was for a moment wrapped in the flames 
that destroyed Vicenza. 

There, unharmed by fire, but wounded and lying on her 
face, lay Retrude, covering herself and her child with her 
own golden hair. 

While Adelaide gazed, Taurello's successful war-cry 
broke on her ear, and roused her jealous hate. She bore 
them away, — a wavering smile flitting about Retrude's 
face showed that she felt no pain, till, as they neared 
Golto, — 

" A few tears 
Slipped in the sunset from her long, black lash, 
And she was gone." 

They laid her in the font which had been Taurello's gift, 
by the meek, marble mourners. Afraid that her husband's 
dawning power would be checked by the ambition of Tau- 
rello, if he knew his son were living, Adelaide gave out 
that the child was El Corte's son. 

Taurello raves and listens, babbles of what may be when, 
far away in Naples, he may defy the Emperor if he will. 

" ' Embrace him, madman ! ' Palma cried, 
Who, through the laugh, saw sweat-drops burst apace, 
And his lips blanching. He did not embrace 
Sordello, but he laid Sordello's hand 
On his own eyes, mouth, forehead. 

Understand 
This while Sordello was becoming flushed 
Out of his whiteness," — 

till. Struggling, mute, he signed for both to leave him. 

" Nay, the best 's behind," 

Taurello raved, playing with his sword, as if he would still 
hew new paths with that. Palma took off his iron hands, 
one by one, from Sordello's shrinking shoulders, who, — 

" Loose, rose to speak, then sank ; 
They left him in the chamber," 

while Palma led Taurello forth. The leader kept up his 
mad talk. But he would go no farther than the dark gal- 



lery below, where he sat in silence, shivering the stone 
bench with his truncheon. 

For the sake of talk, Palma began a rhyme of Sordello's, 
and told how all men praised him : — 

" The foolish praise 
Ended, he drew her on his mailed knees, made 
Her face a frame-work with his hands, — a shade, — 
That done, he kissed her brow," 

and broke into wild plans of vengeance, " Not fit," he 
said, — 

" Be told that foolish boy ; 
But only let Sordello Palma wed. 
Then" — 

He set her in the ragged jet of fierce gold fire the still 
westering sun shot through a grating, and paced the pas- 
sage with clenched hands and head erect, — such "lion's 
port and countenance " as Dante gives Sordello when they 
meet. 

Nowhere in literature is there a grander descriptive 
passage than that which follows. 

Palma, whom Dante spoke with, sat — as he called her 
— the "votary of passion," knowing that her work was 
done. Taurello was wildly pacing the dim gallery, when a 
sound in the chamber they had left stopped the very 
breath of both, 

" Your hand ! " 

demanded Taurello ; and forth they two reeled dizzily, the 
man — as Palma remembered, and told long after, dropping 
a few insignificant words, — 

" As though the spirit's flight, sustained thus far. 
Dropped at the very instant." 

Sordello sat alone where they had left him, — 

" While evening sank 
Down the near terrace to the farther bank," 

in a reverie which holds in urns of fiery beauty the very 
marrow of the tale. 

5 



34 

He questioned all the shifts and changes of his life, 
seeing clearly — 

" How he iiad been without a function." 

" Could he forsake himself in serving All ? 
How piteously little at best must his service prove I 

He would dash 
His badge to earth and all it brought, — abash 
Taurello thus. 

Before 
He dashes it, however, think once more, 
For was that little truly service ? 

" Death 
Tempts ere a tithe of life be tasted. 

Live 
First, and die soon enough, Sordello ! 

Our road is one, 
Our times of travel many, — if slow or fast 
All struggle up to the same point, at last. 
His time of action, for, against, or with 
Our world, grew up that eventide, 
Gigantic with its power of joy, beside 
The world's eternity of impotence 
To profit, though at all that Joy's expense." 

" Oh ! it were too absurd to slight 
For the hereafter the to-day's delight;" 

and he lives over in fancy all the state and delight of life 
to v^hich that Prefect's badge entitles him ! How empty 
it all seems ! 

" Eternity his soul 
Exceeded so was incomplete for, each 
Single sphere. Time. But does our knowledge reach 
No further ? 

Must life be ever just escaped which should 
Have been enjoyed? " 

" Never may some soul see All, 
The Great Before and After and the Small Now ? 

Here is a soul whom to affect 
Nature has plied with all her means, from trees 
And flowers, e'en to the multitude, and these 
Decides he save or no ? One word to end ! " 

Quick ! what has Sordello found .'' 

" For they approach, — approach ! that foot's rebound." 



35 

Those whom that dull, strange sound disturbed below 
follow upon his last grand thoughts. They reach the 
threshold, throw back the tapestry: — 

" You divine who sat there dead ? 
Under /lis foot, the badge. ' Still,' Palma said, 
A triumph lingering in the wide eyes." 

" And as Palma pressed 
In one great kiss her lips upon his breast. 
It beat." 

They laid him beneath the font by Retrude's side. 

Is it possible to care how the history went .-' Yet 
Browning pauses to tell us, and the facts may carry their 
lesson. 

Taurello emerged from misery and married Sofia da 
Romano, the last daughter of old Romano in the convent, 
who bears him so many sons that when it is said, " Tau- 
rello's son died ere his sire," men ask, which one of Sofia's 
five is meant, Ecelin and Alberic played with their great- 
hearted brother-in-law, as old Romano had done before. 
Ecelin took Verona, next year Vicenza, and Taurello's little 
boy inquires when he may be " his own proud uncle's 
page .? " 

Years rolled away ; one fatal day Taurello meddled with 
the marine of Venice : — 

" So Venice 
Captured him at Ferrara," 

and none being very angry with the old man, they carried 
him to Venice for a show. 

" It took this Ecelin to supersede that man," 

The fathers, pointing, say to their children ; and this sad 
fate befalls because Sordello had not faith to live, but left 
Ecelin to — 

" Prove wherever there is will 
To do, there 's plenty to be done, or ill 
Or good." 

Ecelin perished in his wars ; Alberic was trailed to death 
by a wild horse, " through ravine and bramble-bush." 



36 

These pieces swept off the board, Browning turns back 
to Sordello : — 

" Is there no more to say ? " 

The chroniclers of Mantua tried their pen, telling how 
Sordello saved Mantua, and elsewhere nobly behaved ; and 
so the Troubadour passed with posterity for just the god 
he never could become : — 

" The one step too mean 
For him to take, we suffer at this day 
Because of: Ecelin had pushed away 
Its chance ere Uante could arrive and take 
That step Sordello spurned, for the world's sake : 
Dante did much, Sordello's chance was gone. 

He was chiefly glad 
To have achieved the few real deeds he had. 
Because that way assured they were not worth 
The doing. 

A sorry farce, such life is, after all. 
Sleep and forget, Sordello ! In effect 
He sleeps, the feverish poet, I suspect 
Not utterly companionless ; but, friends, 
Wake up ; the ghost 's gone, and the story ends ! " 



SORDELLO: 



A HISTORY AND A POEM. 



By CAROLINE H. BALL. 



BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1886. 



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